Echoes
by Rockstar with a Vendetta
Summary: One-Shot. Jonathan cannot help but be reminded of bygone days, but this flame does not burn violet or even K'miri; it is steady and very much Keladry. KelxJonathan. Written for Verasque.


**This was a casual challenge from Verasque, and here it is. (:**

**

* * *

**

She didn't know she was being watched, with her face turned away from the bed and staring out the window. She was perched on the window seat, one leg drawn up and her chin resting thoughtfully on her knee. Her face was haunted and ghostly in the shaft of pale moonlight that slanted across it.

Jonathan propped his head up on an elbow, observing her silently. He never saw her in moments of this kind of unguardedness. She did not share her thoughts with him and he could not read them in her expressions, for all that he was skilled in the art of discerning that sort of thing. Perhaps he was losing his touch in his old age, if forty-five could be considered old. Or maybe it was his subjects who were getting craftier. Neither idea appealed to him.

She shifted a little, a small sigh escaping her. His eyes trailed up her long, muscular leg, remembering the feel of their strength as they locked around his waist. She wore a nightshirt, her position allowing it to ride high on her hip, and he imagined he could see the beginnings of a bruise; sometimes he was rough when he took her from behind. Her small breasts were barely visible beneath the cotton, but he had cupped them and kissed them so many times that he knew their soft contours like the back of his hand.

His body stirred demandingly, aching with the desire of a man for a woman.

He murmured, "Keladry."

Apparently, he had not been as clandestine as he had thought. She turned her head, unsurprised. He could not read her shadowed face.

"Come back to bed," he said, lifting up the sheets. "You should sleep."

"Somehow I don't think sleep is what you have in mind," she said flatly, but she slipped from the seat and crawled into bed with him.

Jonathan drew her tight to his chest and rolled over on his back so that she sprawled on top of him. Straddling him, Keladry sat up, leaning forward with her hands pressing forcibly down on his shoulders. Usually, he hated that; he was not one to be in the submissive position and fought her whenever she tried it. But that was part of their routine, that fight for dominance, and in the end she came all the harder for being the submissive one.

Now, though—he was content to feel her heat against him, with her hair swinging in her eyes and her scent of leather and clean flesh drowning him like an old memory.

"The queen comes home tomorrow."

He made a noncommittal noise as his hands slid up her thighs.

"You know," she continued in a low voice, "your wife?"

"Gods damn you," he snapped. He shoved her off him. "Why do you always want to talk about her?"

"Why don't you ever want to?"

Jonathan sat up, no longer sleepy or excited. She knew how to cool him off as fast as she knew how to make him hot. _Just like a woman_, he thought irritably.

"I don't think it's proper to be talking about her with you," he said through gritted teeth. "And I don't see why you think it is."

"I'm curious."

"Why?"

"The queen is a beautiful woman, and generous, and kind. She bore your children, stood beside you. I'm curious to know why you make infidelity a habit."

"It's hardly a habit. I've never been unfaithful to her."

"So what changed?"

"You."

"Why me?"

"You're different."

"Different?"

"And familiar."

"I see."

Keladry fell silent, her mask brokenly only by a queer half-smile that touched her lips. _Crafty, indeed_, Jonathan thought warily. He wondered how much she had heard over the years and how many puzzle pieces she had put together since that first night. He had found her in the gardens, escaping some grand party, and when she looked at him through long lashes he had seen a brightly burning fire he had not thought he missed.

He was torn between eyes of violet and eyes of dreaming earth.

It had been strange in the beginning, seeing her quiet face in the daylight and pretending that he had not spent the previous night with her breath hot and heavy in his ears. And yet—it was not so strange, when all those years ago he had had to pretend his squire did not share his bed.

The guilt had been surprisingly slow to come, and even now it was a brief ache when he kissed his wife's fingers or shared her bed. But the fire she possessed was not the same as a warrior's.

Her voice like steady honey jolted him out of his reverie. "What did you say?"

"I said I love you."

Jonathan pressed his mouth against hers, soft, sweet. She was not Thayet, cool and beautiful, who he loved with all his heart in spite of his deception.

And she was not Alanna, burning and fierce, though sometimes he forgot when he traced Keladry's scars and pictured Alanna's body like it was yesterday, when he inhaled a scent both woman and man, when he took every precaution so that she was not discovered in his bed.

"You didn't have to say that."

"I know."

Keladry burned with a flame all her own. Steady and inextinguishable.

"I love you, too," Jonathan murmured into her hair, and meant it.


End file.
